[Discuss] DMARC issue, Yahoo and beyond

Robert Krawitz rlk at alum.mit.edu
Wed May 21 14:30:43 EDT 2014


On Wed, 21 May 2014 14:10:48 -0400, Richard Pieri wrote:
> Derek Martin wrote:
>> If a mailing list--which is already a special case of e-mail
>> usage--*ADDS* a reply-to header to an e-mail which matches the from
>> header of the message, when none previously existed, the net effect is
>> nil: respondants will (assuming they even honor reply-to, which is not
>
> It most certainly is problematic. The net effect is that it causes good
> mail programs to behave inconsistently. When set to the list it breaks
> reply to author functions in good mail programs (Elm, Pine and their
> derivatives; Thunderbird and Seamonkey, and even the venerable Berkeley
> Mail to name a few). When set to the original author it breaks reply to
> list and reply to all functions in those same programs.
>
> Lists setting or rewriting Reply-To headers punishes users of good, open
> source mail programs and rewards users of broken, proprietary mail
> programs like Outlook.
>
> Thoughtless? Hardly. I've thought about this off and on for far too long.

OK.  So if the list has a policy that all replies should be directed
to the list rather than the author, what should the list do to
"encourage" members to honor that policy?

(Don't simply say that it's a bad policy.  It may be that the list
owners want to encourage public rather than private discussion, for
example.)
-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>

MIT VI-3 1987 - Congrats MIT Engineers 6 straight men's hoops tourney
Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom  --  http://ProgFree.org
Project lead for Gutenprint   --    http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton



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